1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an asset management system in a computer system, and more specifically to a computer system for central management of assets to which a plurality of host computers and a plurality of disk array devices are connected using a fiber channel, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the conventional asset management system in a computer system, information stored in each device such as a host computer, a network storage, etc. is partially managed, and the partial information is combined with another piece of partial information by, for example, a system manager, thereby associating each piece of information with other pieces of information.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional asset managing method. In FIG. 1, when a host 101 and storage 103 are configured as a system in one vendor (including an OEM) as indicated by A, the information about each device can be managed in a unique format. However, in the system configuration in which a host vendor such as B and a storage vendor such as C coexist, information is managed in a format unique for each vendor, and the information cannot be associated with each other in a unique format, thereby requiring a person functioning as interface and combining plural pieces of information in unique formats.
Furthermore, in a system in which a plurality of host computers are connected to a plurality of disk array devices through a fiber channel, there are various vendor devices in the computer system although storage is centralized. The vendor devices can have different OS (operating systems). Therefore, each operating system has its own data format and accessing method from host to storage. As a result, it has been difficult to know which assets are used by which host computer, OS, or application. In addition, in case trouble occurs with certain assets, it has been difficult to know on which OS or application the trouble has an influence.